


to survive

by bastaerd



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: (it's the scurvy and lead poisoning and unresolved ongoing trauma), Canonical Character Death, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Past Character Death, Sexual Dysfunction, almost sort of proxy sex, ep 9- the c the c the open c, grief sex???, no editing we die like sir john, past crozier/fitzjames, past fitzjames/le vesconte
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-15 23:21:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29815932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bastaerd/pseuds/bastaerd
Summary: “Lieutenant,” says Crozier, setting his pen down and turning in his chair so that he and Henry are facing each other.Henry nods. “Sir.”A silence passes between the two of them. The wind whistles outside, yawning over the rocks and whipping the cords of the tent. Finally, Crozier straightens, asks, “Are you here because you’ve something to report, or something you need?”“No, sir,” Henry replies, letting the flap of the tent fall behind him. “I only wished to speak with you.”“About what?”“Not a report, sir. About James.”
Relationships: Francis Crozier/Henry T. D. Le Vesconte
Comments: 11
Kudos: 14





	to survive

**Author's Note:**

> spiritual prequel to [the pull of loyalty](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28913799).  
> this was supposed to be for the face-fucking square on my bingo card but then i remembered they can't get it up past probably ep 8. anyway does anyone else find it odd how when it comes to smut i can either write 1) collins and goodsir going at it like rabbits with undiagnosed mental illness or 2) weird sad unsatisfying bullshit, erectile dysfunction ahoy  
> tw:  
> \- the first part of the fic deals with fitzjames' corpse. to skip that, go to _"The men move rocks with their shovels and with the knowledge that this is not a grave they will ever visit again."_

Graham’s body had never been brought back. Sir John’s is lost to them somewhere in the sea, except for what of him there was to mourn over. What remains of Fairholme’s is crusted over with ice and left where it was found.

The bones of James’ hand feel delicate under his waxy skin. Breakable, in a way he had never seemed before, even bleeding from two fresh wounds. The only softness to it is the faint dusting of hair at his wrist and knuckles, which are split and red from the dry chill, but otherwise bloodless. His long fingers are stiff. They do not drum against the cushioned floor; they have no gestures left in them, no more stories left to illustrate. All their work is done.

Farther up, on his left arm, there is a stain on his shirt, and a matching one on his side. A brownish spot sticks the linen to his skin, old blood that has seeped out and then dried in and around the fibers like a clutching hand. Those are different from the damp spots left by sweat, gone clammy now, under his arms and at his collarbones, around his chest, at the nape of his neck. Different, still, from the newest stain at his collar, the one which is still wet and comes off smelling faintly medicinal in the way sick bay does to anyone not a physician.

His face hangs slack, free of all expression, even discomfort, even fear. The sight of a peaceful body has become so unfamiliar over this long string of months of death. The last bodies to which they had said their goodbyes had been anything but; their mouths had been frozen in screams and cries for help, their eyes open wide. That, or their faces had been mangled and they had to be identified by their clothing, by what they wore, rather than by who they were, and perhaps that had made the parting an easier one. But this is James, his eyes closed, the lashes soft against his cheeks, his mouth parted only as necessary to let escape his final breath. There is no room for doubt, no case of mistaken identity. James will not throw open the tent flap and say it was all a misunderstanding, nor will he open his eyes and breathe again. There was no violence to his departure. There was nothing at all to it.

No trace of warmth lingers. Every inch of the corpse cries out _no more, no more, no more._

Henry supposes he ought to be glad for that as he picks up a gnarled length of cord and threads it through one corner eyelet. He reaches across James’ legs, taking up the other corner and bringing it over, and starts there, threading the cord through and beginning the process of sealing the body away. As he works, he touches James only where accident allows, a chance brushing of his knuckles against the side of James’ knee, his thigh, his hip. When he reaches James’ chest, Henry has the thought of pulling one of those candle wax hands free from the canvas again, peeling off one brittle fingernail and placing it on his tongue to swallow like a pill. Perhaps then he might inherit something from him, some meager piece of his character that does not so much transform Henry into something more of James as it makes a coffin out of him.

His mouth is dry enough so that it would only lodge itself in his throat, and thus he might kill himself for James, or James might kill him. He is dry enough so that he cannot even spare a tear for him, should he produce one. How unfair that when the time comes for it, the men cannot scrounge up the barest of fanfares. Sir John’s leg got more of a funeral than the whole of James will, and now Henry cannot even cry for him.

He laces the canvas up to his chest, until the last step is to cover up James’ face and relegate him to memory in earnest, and finds the words of the _Pater Noster_ fled from his mind entirely. 

* * *

The men move rocks with their shovels and with the knowledge that this is not a grave they will ever visit again. It is not a memorial, not any more than burning the bodies left after the beast’s last attack was. Henry’s hands sting with splinters. Old, dry wood bites into his palms as he digs a shallow bed for the body. Afterwards, he throws his shovel aside, sparing no thought for the men they will need to bury in the future, so that he can take up James’ legs while Crozier carries his shoulders. Together, the two of them set him in the grave, and as soon as they do, Crozier walks off. There is a brief moment where Henry thinks he is just going to keep walking until he disappears, but as soon as he thinks it, the silhouette stops.

A handful of men linger around the grave, saying nothing. They are not quite sure what to do, which is, perhaps, understandable. No eulogy has been recited. Not even Bridgens, the best read of any of them, can find a word to say, though his mouth opens and closes, and then opens and closes once more, as if driven by obligation to speak. At least the old steward cared to try, which is more than anyone else here can claim. Henry wants to go to each of them in turn, grab them by the shoulders and shake them, ask them, _“Can’t you think of a single thing to say for him after all this time? All this time, and the best you can manage is silence?”_

Crozier walks further from the camp with Blanky and Golding, and with his lieutenant. Henry watches them go. Watches the latter two return and barely registers Little’s _“Gather up, men.”_

From off in the distance, he hears laughter. How pleasant it must be to have a friend at a time like this.

* * *

They make their next camp some miles south, far enough to render James’ grave unreturnable. Where last camp had gone up slowly and clumsily by men used to working in greater numbers, this one is easier to put up, even down to one captain and two-- three, Henry keeps forgetting to remember the newest-- lieutenants. But Jopson went to his knees as he unloaded a crate of tins from the boat, and they nearly split and burst on the hard ground. Crozier had helped him up, and then Hartnell guided him to one of the first-erected tents, where he has been relegated on his own ever since. Henry has not absented himself from duty to spare a visit to him.

There remains very little in the way of supplies. This is a fact of which he has been acutely aware, without the yoke of sentimentality to bind him, far longer than Crozier has wanted to acknowledge, but perhaps with James buried, he will see reason. They need to continue south, in whatever numbers they are able. The survival of the ill depends on the ability of the men continuing on foot, but Henry finds that, day by day, he cares less about preserving those who will surely die and add to their burden. If Crozier had allowed them, they could have left the ill with at least a chance of being rescued, of sustaining themselves on the tins until the forward party returned with their rescuers-- from Hudson’s Bay Company, perhaps, or a crew of whalers, or a rescue team dispatched by the Admiralty themselves. Now, they will all die with their morality intact. Henry would rather live to mend it; he would rather James had lived, no matter his ire. He would rather never be called _Dundy_ again, if it means hearing James’ voice.

Hartnell emerges from the tent Bridgens shares with Peglar. The look on his face is not so different from his usual expression, like a man perpetually squinting against the sun, but the way he folds his hands tells no good news. It ought to be nighttime now, but the sun is still high, swinging on that shallow angle and never dipping below the horizon. The day cannot end, and they cannot move on. It is forever the moment James died, and they are fossilized in it like feathers in amber.

Henry’s watch has long stopped ticking, but he wears it tucked into his pocket all the same, the chain wound through his braces. There is no longer reason to count the hours; the men rest when they are tired, eat when they can stomach eating, work when work demands it of them. They will walk later. They ought to be walking now, picking up spare miles as they go, and if one of them manages to crawl through Fort Resolution’s gate, then they will have succeeded in securing the others’ survival. If James had been at the command meeting days ago, he would have agreed to the idea, and his support would have coaxed Crozier into supporting it, too. Instead, he had been languishing in his own sweat-sodden bed, tended to by the man who used to button his jackets and mend his cuffs. What good was Crozier’s love for James if his refusal to leave him had sealed his fate? What good was his love for any of them, then?

It ought to be dark outside when Henry finds himself stood underneath the opening to Crozier’s tent. In the lamplight, Crozier’s shadow is propelled across the floor, showing him hunched over the table that passes for a desk now, shimmed at one leg by a book. It reminds him of the way they had left Terror, her mass all tilted at such an angle that the furniture had to be nailed in place or suspended from the ceiling to level them.

“Lieutenant,” says Crozier, setting his pen down and turning in his chair so that he and Henry are facing each other.

Henry nods. “Sir.”

A silence passes between the two of them. The wind whistles outside, yawning over the rocks and whipping the cords of the tent. Finally, Crozier straightens, asks, “Are you here because you’ve something to report, or something you need?” He says it with the same quiet concern to which he has habituated himself in the past weeks. No longer do his lieutenant’s names come out in hard syllables, but with maternal softness. James’ name had carried a quiet _j’aime_ with it. Now, Henry almost wishes to have the drunkard back. At least then he had the anger necessary to push the men around instead of letting failure come to them.

“No, sir,” he replies, letting the flap of the tent fall behind him. “I only wished to speak with you.”

“About what?”

“Not a report, sir.” He watches as something passes across Crozier’s face, like a raincloud. Perhaps he anticipates something here, a reading of Henry’s discontent, but he remains placid, attentive. Captainly. He is almost loathe to ruin it, but continues, nonetheless: “About James.”

The way he says his name-- _James--_ holds none of the qualities of Crozier’s voice. They have the same flat vowel, but where Crozier’s is a calm sea, Henry’s is a hard marble floor. It makes him sound like a stranger. He is perversely glad for the way Crozier recoils, just in the blink of his eyes and the stilling of his throat.

It is a moment before Crozier speaks. “What about James?” he asks him.

“That he’s dead for your negligence,” Henry says, and then inclines his chin towards the bed. “May I, sir?”

Crozier blinks again, nods once, appearing stunned. Good. If Henry’s words are a bludgeon, he will beat sense into his commanding officer. He sits himself on Crozier’s bed, just at the edge, perched forward with his elbows resting against his knees and holding his shoulders up like two posts of a tent. Like this, they are at eye level with each other, if just a bit uneven; Henry peers up, only slightly, to meet Crozier’s eyes.

“You’ve no idea what I would give for James to be with us,” Crozier sighs. He braces one arm against his table, looking exhausted, a strong structure burdened by too much.

“Tell me.”

“Hmm?”

“What you would give. Tell me.”

At first, it seems as though Crozier will not offer an answer. He would be entirely within his rights as a captain to order him out of the tent, but if they are to pick and choose which parts of propriety to keep and which to discard, that suits Henry just fine. “I don’t know,” says Crozier, at last. “I might say my life, if it wouldn’t deprive me of the opportunity to be with him again. I would rather give up the rest of my life, minus a day, if I knew that would be enough, but…”

Henry weighs that in his mind. “No, it wouldn’t.”

“No, it wouldn’t, would it.” Crozier shakes his head, scrubs his hand down his face. “And he would berate me for saying so.”

“He would berate you for saying you would give up so much of yourself, in the first place.”

The way Crozier props his face against one hand, fingers splayed across his jaw, reminds Henry of James. He can see him in the gesture, only the fingers are longer, the face different, with lines instead of pockmarks. No, he thinks to himself, you wouldn’t like to see him dash himself against the rocks for you, would you.

“There is something I’ve not told the men,” Crozier says, his voice gone softer, his words whistling through his teeth. “It doesn’t concern them, and I’ll not put their survival in jeopardy for the sake of clearing my own conscience. But it does concern James. More than concerns him, really.”

Henry waits. He watches as Crozier gets to his feet and seems to slump as he straightens, a paradoxical bending of the spine and bowing of the shoulders even as he makes himself tall. He is Terror, listing sideways, stuck and sinking.

“I was with him when he died,” Crozier confesses, though this is nothing Henry does not already know. It is important, anyway, to hear it from Crozier himself. “As he died, rather. He became… he couldn’t move, from his limbs to his vocal chords. It was perhaps the first time I had heard him truly speechless, and I found I couldn’t bear his silence. He told me to live, and then asked me to help him.”

“Help him?” Henry prods.

Crozier closes his eyes against the memory torn open again, the softened scar of it splitting. “Out of it,” he says, very softly. “To help him out of it.”

Henry thinks of the strange spill at the edge of James’ collar. It had smelled of something he had only smelled before in Dr. Stanley’s sickbay, not a bodily secretion but a tincture he could not place. “Did you?” he asks.

Crozier raises his head, opens his eyes to the ceiling of his tent. He seems to search for something in the dark corners around the posts, but then nods. “It ought to be impossible,” he says, “to both regret and not regret something at the same time.”

Henry remembers the slack lines of James’ face, all pain eased out of it. He had looked like a saint, laid out on the blanket as he was, touched by something greater than death. Had there been love in his eyes before they closed? Had Crozier’s palm been warm?

He watches the light catch the far side of Crozier’s face, illuminating the part of it he cannot see. Slowly, he, too, stands, rocks shifting under the soles of his boots in a way that reminds him of the buck and roll of Erebus through turbulent waters. There ought to be an entire snowy landscape between the two of them, too dangerous to traverse without a companion, but the space closes like nothing. Crozier meets his eyes, and Henry takes his face in his hands as if lifting it from a coffin. He smooths his thumbs down from Crozier’s cheeks, at either side of his mouth, and, closing his eyes, kisses him.

To his credit, Crozier’s surprise catches him only for a split second. Henry feels his shoulders jerk, his throat leap, but then his mouth parts under his, and Henry tilts his head so that they are kissing in earnest. They are all each other has of James, trying to find him there in the other. Together they excavate him, the remainder of him lingering in the air between their bodies. They find scant traces in each other’s mouths, against their wind-bitten cheeks, along their throats. Crozier lifts a hand to Henry’s neck, presses his thumb there against the ridge of his Adam’s apple and then presses a lingering kiss to the spot. There is something unsaid in that kiss, and the only other person who can decipher it is dead. Henry does not ask about it. Instead, he explores Crozier’s unfamiliar body as if it is James’ familiar one. When he sets his hands where James’ waist would be, they come to the widest part of Crozier’s ribs; he maps his hips and the creases where his thighs begin, follows them inward.

None of them, Henry wagers, have been able to raise a stand in some time, and the seamen-- what irony-- for longer than the officers. He does not expect the thing to rise to life under his hand. Still, he palms the place at the apex of Crozier’s thighs where his prick hangs listless, imagining how James might have done it, remembering how he had done it to James when they had been younger, warmer men. Had James gone to his knees for Crozier? Perhaps it had been the other way around. Henry makes to sink to the ground then, but is stopped by Crozier’s hands on his shoulders.

“Wait,” he tells him, pink in the face in a way which gives the illusion of health. “Your knees?”

They ache, but that is only the beginning. James had suffered it for far longer than Henry has yet had the chance, and, besides, everyone’s knees pain them now. “Nothing I can’t weather,” he replies, and offers a smile that pulls strangely at his lips. It is another man’s borrowed smile, and Crozier seems to recognize it as the corners of his eyes crease and he guides Henry instead to the edge of the bed.

Henry sits there, his hands going to the fly on Crozier’s trousers and working it apart. His hands have gone numb and clumsy, never quite warm even when he breathes against them, and moving his fingers takes work. They still bear splinters from the shovel and burns from keeping his harness in place, and it stings when he clenches them into fists, but those are rare occasions. Crozier’s hands come down and guide him, parting his smalls and extracting his limp cock from them.

It is a fat thing, even like this, a thick weight against Henry’s palm as he tests him, rolls his stones in their warm pouch and listens to Crozier’s slow, deep intake of breath at the motion. Then he kisses the prick in his hand where the shaft meets Crozier’s belly and presses his face to the nest of pale, wiry hair that surrounds the spot. It is nothing like how James felt, sounded, smelled, but still, he breathes, _“James,”_ and pretends that the hand that cups his cheek is wider and longer-fingered.

“There you are,” says Crozier from above him; when he looks up, Henry sees that his eyes are closed, his head tucked down so that his chin touches his chest. He dips his own head to Crozier’s thigh and kisses it, his mouth open and his tongue flat against the inseam of his trousers. It tastes of sweat and salt, of heavy exertion. It reminds Henry of how it tastes for one’s tears to run into one’s own mouth. He attends to this work until Crozier whispers, _“James, oh, James,”_ though his cock does not so much as twitch. Neither can Henry raise a cockstand, and knows it without making sure, but he still dips his hand between his thighs and grinds the heel of it to his prick. It only feels uncomfortable, and slightly itchy. The hand on the side of his face moves back over his ear, fingers catching in the tangled parts of his dry hair until it rests high at the back of his head. The weight of it holds Henry’s head against Crozier’s groin, where layers of wool and linen tickle at his cheeks; it is a hold he can break if he so wishes, but right now, he would rather stay.

The bitter simulacrum of pleasure is as close to an orgasm as they can achieve out here. Knowing nothing is to come of it frees them from the expectation of performance. Henry licks at Crozier’s cock without strategy, while Crozier curls over him, his belly brushing the crown of Henry’s head and lifting his forelock in the mockery of a salute. Rank does not matter like this, when they both subordinate themselves for an absent commander. Crozier’s hips stutter, more muscle memory than for appreciation of Henry’s attentions to him, and he strokes his cheek and whispers, _“There, James,”_ while Henry rubs his flank from hip to knee and sighs it back to him. Crozier wraps his arms about Henry’s shoulders, crooks his knee up on the bed with his soft cock on Henry’s tongue. James’ name passes from Crozier to Henry, from Henry to Crozier, communicated by voice, by touch, by thought, cradled reverently by whichever vehicle carries it. James is here. They fulfill him for one another.

But the illusion cannot hold. Outside, someone calls for the captain and means Crozier, though it seems to take him a moment to remember himself. He unfurls himself from his position, and Henry straightens his back and wipes his mouth, wet with only his own saliva, and not much of it, either. The gesture is more ceremony than anything.

“I’m sorry,” says Crozier lowly as he tucks himself back into his trousers and does up the fly. His fingers stumble over it, and Henry watches him without making to help. Whatever Crozier is apologizing about, whether it is for being called away, for lacking virility, for some other slight, Henry cannot divine, nor does he concern himself overmuch. 

“Quite alright,” he tells him, not unkindly, but not kindly, either.

Crozier scoffs, smoothing the seams of his waistcoat. It has few favors to offer his image, especially now. “I can’t say whether you’re right or wrong,” he says. “James bore the burden of my regrets. I was glad to bear his.” Dons his slops, takes his cap. “I can only hope to carry them to someplace warm.”

“Perhaps we ought to split the load between us.”

A sliver of sunlight cuts through the tent, paler and bluer than that from the lamp. For a moment, Crozier pauses under the opening, holding the flap with one raised arm. There, his hair is the color of straw. Shadows catch in the tiny pockmarks in his cheeks, and in the widening dimple as he smiles. It is as sad as it is content, and Henry recognizes it as belonging to someone else.

“I would like that very much,” Crozier answers him. Then the call comes again-- Little, asking urgently for the captain-- and he leaves.

* * *

“Gather round, everyone. Men, up.”

Henry counts their numbers as the men file into the tent and stand where they can. Their nails are ragged and stained, their skin shiny with a sickly sheen of perspiration. There is blood in their hairlines and gums, and some of them position themselves around the tent posts so as to support themselves. An even number, he notes. It only means he will have to convince them well.

“Where’s Lieutenant Little?” asks Best, looking around over the heads of the other men as though he might have missed him slipping into the tent.

 _Carry them to someplace warm,_ Henry reminds himself. He closes his eyes for a moment, and when he opens them, it is with renewed clarity.

“I thought it best not to wake him for this.”

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [tumblr](http://edward-little.tumblr.com).


End file.
